Friday, March 5, 2010

Words & More Words

Politicians and the media seem to use words not generally used in our everyday conversations. The following three words are becoming overused in news reporting but rarely if ever used by us in our everyday discussions at work or home.

Source: Dictionary.com an Ask.com service.

par•a•digm
1. One that serves as a pattern or model.
2. A set or list of all the inflectional forms of a word or of one of its grammatical categories: the paradigm of an irregular verb.
3. A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

nar•cis•sism
1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself.
2. A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem.
3. Erotic pleasure derived from contemplation or admiration of one's own body or self, especially as a fixation on or a regression to an infantile stage of development.
4. The attribute of the human psyche characterized by admiration of oneself but within normal limits.

dis•in•gen•u•ous
1. Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating: "an ambitious, disingenuous, philistine, and hypocritical operator, who ... exemplified ... the most disagreeable traits of his time" (David Cannadine).
2. Pretending to be unaware or unsophisticated; faux-naïf.
3. Usage Problem Unaware or uninformed; naive.

No comments: